Far seen across the brine of thankless years. 50 If the chosen soul could never be alone In deep mid-silence, open-doored to God, No greatness ever had been dreamed or done; Among dull hearts a prophet never grew; The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude. The old world is effete; there man with man Jostles, and, in the brawl for means to live, Life is trod underfoot,--Life, the one block Of marble that's vouchsafed wherefrom to carve Our great thoughts, white and godlike, to shine down 60 The future, Life, the irredeemable block, Which one o'er-hasty chisel-dint oft mars, Scanting our room to cut the features out Of our full hope, so forcing us to crown With a mean head the perfect limbs, or leave The god's face glowing o'er a satyr's trunk, Failure's brief epitaph. Yes, Europe's world Reels on to judgment; there the common need, Losing God's sacred use, to be a bond 'Twixt Me and Thee, sets each one scowlingly 70 O'er his own selfish hoard at bay; no state, Knit strongly with eternal fibres up Of all men's separate and united weals, Self-poised and sole as stars, yet one as light, Holds up a shape of large Humanity To which by natural instinct every man Pays loyalty exulting, by which all Mould their own lives, and feel their pulses filled With the red, fiery blood of the general life, Making them mighty in peace, as now in war 80 They are, even in the flush of victory, weak, Conquering that manhood which should them subdue. And what gift bring I to this untried world? Shall the same tragedy be played anew, And the same lurid curtain drop at last On one dread desolation, one fierce crash Of that recoil which on its makers God Lets Ignorance and Sin and Hunger make, Early or late? Or shall that commonwealth Whose potent unity and concentric force 90 Can draw these scattered joints and parts of men Into a whole ideal man once more, Which sucks not from its limbs the life away, But sends it flood-tide and creates itself Over again in every citizen, Be there built up? For me, I have no choice; I might turn back to other destinies, For one sincere key opes all Fortune's doors; But whoso answers not God's earliest call Forfeits or dulls that faculty supreme 100 Of lying open to his genius Which makes the wise heart certain of its ends.